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The State House hearing room seemed an unlikely place for grown men to bare their souls.

Ned Holstein of the National Parents Organization testified for change.

But as father after father took a seat in a committee room, urging lawmakers to support proposed legislation to revamp Massachusetts’ child-custody statute, they laid out the particulars of their divorces and personal lives in blunt detail.

The scene could soon repeat itself inside state houses across the country. About 20 states are considering measures that move toward more equal custody arrangements for parents following divorce or separation, according to Ned Holstein of the National Parents Organization, a Boston-based group that has been a driving force behind the push for shared parenting. A handful of states have already enacted similar legislation, while several others have formed task forces to examine family-law issues.

Battles over custody and child support are as old as divorce itself. But as parenting norms have shifted in the past half-century — the “Leave It To Beaver” setup giving way to one in which 71 percent of women work outside the home and more fathers are engaged in child care — lawmakers seem increasingly willing to consider that long-standing child custody statutes might warrant review.

“I think it’s reflecting what’s going on in the culture with parenting and shared-parenting and fathers’ involvement,” said Constance Ahrons, professor emerita of sociology at the University of Southern California, and author of two books on divorce. “Fathers used to be helpers [during marriage]. Now, they’re expected to be equal parents.”

They add that changes would make statutes align more closely with research suggesting children benefit from spending ample time with both parents. One study, released earlier this year in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that children living in joint-physical custody arrangements exhibited fewer psychosomatic issues than those living with just one parent.

‘One size doesn’t fit all. There has got to be a safeguard for best interest of the child.’

Linda Elrod

Even as the movement has gained steam, it has attracted critics.

Groups ranging from domestic violence organizations to bar associations have expressed concern over blanket statutes guaranteeing parents a certain amount of visitation time. Instead, they argue, custody disputes should be handled on a case-by-case basis, always with a child’s best interests in mind.

“There’s a small but loud number of people who believe fathers are being treated unfairly in the probate and family courts,” said Jamie Sabino, consulting attorney for the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a poverty law and policy center. “And they therefore want to take away what is essentially the discretion of judges to determine what’s in the best interest of the children and try to put in a more rigid scheme that would represent their rights.”

While many agree that having parents share custody can be beneficial, they point out that some parents simply aren’t capable of making it work.

“One size doesn’t fit all,” said Linda Elrod, distinguished professor at Washburn University School of Law in Kansas and past chair of the American Bar Association’s family law section. “There has got to be a safeguard for best interest of the child.”

For much of the past 150 years, custody disputes typically fell under the “tender years” doctrine, a judicial presumption that it was in a young child’s best interest to be placed with the mother. Joint custody began to emerge as the national norm in the late ’70s, says Ahrons. And though it remains so today, it has sometimes proved problematic.

“It’s a very broad, catch-all term that parents should share the children, [but] it doesn’t say equally,” said Ahrons. “Parents will say, ‘Let’s have joint custody,’ and then they’ll spend the next six months arguing about what that means.”

In Massachusetts, discussions about a new approach to child custody ramped up in the spring of 2012, when then-Governor Deval Patrick convened a roughly 20-person committee made up of lawmakers, psychologists, and representatives from state and nonprofit agencies to examine the state’s child-centered family laws.

A report issued by the group last year — described by its facilitator as a “compromise” but later denounced by some of the organizations represented on the committee — concluded that shared parental responsibility best serves most children’s best interests, and that a child’s adjustment to divorce is easier when caregiver functions continue in a pattern the child is used to.

The proposed legislation strongly encourages, but does not mandate, courts to grant shared custody in which a child would spend no less than one-third of the time with each parent.(The court typically has considerable leeway in assigning legal and physical custody, though statistics on custody arrangements are not kept by the state’s probate and family court or the Department of Children and Families.)

It would also establish sanctions for parents who fail to comply with court-ordered parenting plans, while rewarding those who exhibit a willingness to cooperate with the other parent.

“I kind of think it reflects a new generation of parenting,” said the working group’s facilitator, Michael Leshin, a partner at the Wellesley law firm Ginsburg Leshin Gibbs & Jones.

A spokesman for Governor Charlie Baker declined to comment on the bill.

Others have concerns, among them: that the legislation could give more power to abusive parents, take discretion away from judges, and force hostile parents into a shared system that could prove detrimental to a child.

“The way this bill is written, it highlights the rights of the parents over the best-interest analysis of the children,” said Maritza Karmely, an associate professor at Suffolk Law School, who teaches family law.

Despite the opposition, there have been small signs of tangible movement.

A Utah law that went into effect in May bumped qualifying noncustodial parents’ minimum visitation days from 110 per year to 145. And two years ago, an Arizona law went into effect preventing courts from giving preference to either gender in custody cases.

In Massachusetts, lawmakers remain noncommittal about the bill clearing both the House and Senate. For now, Holstein remains optimistic.

“When I started this movement,” he said, “we were being totally ignored, and then we were laughed at, and now we’re being vehemently opposed.

Against the explicit warnings of the American Forefathers such as James Madison in one of the most famous of The Federalist Papers,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._51, we have let one group of people take control of all branches of government. Attorneys through their Bars have taken control over all the powers of American government with catastrophic results to this nation as attested by anyone seeking justice in our current judicial system, and as evidence shows...

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3d DCA Watch -- Bye Bye Bunker Edition!
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Stop Court-Ordered Parental Alienation

February 23rd

Obnoxious ‘Renegade’ Justice ~ Family Courts

The abuses of parents and children by Family Courts, social workers, and family law attorneys have harmed parents and children for far too long. We intend to end that abuse

Family court is designed by its makers to be probably the most dangerous life event parents and children can endure. It enables and profits from every inhumane instinct known to man—greed, hate, resentment, fear—resulting in abundant cash flow for the divorce industry and a fallout of parent and children’s misery.

And behind the curtain of this machine of misery we’ve uncovered its cause—the multi-billion dollar divorce industry, populated by judges, attorneys, and a machinery of tax-dollar fed “judicial administrators,” social workers that George Orwell would marvel at.

We’ve been delivering that message kindly for years now, yet the tide keeps rising on families in crisis. We’ve appealed to the county courts, state and local politicians, state judicial oversight bodies, United States Representatives, and just plain old human dignity, but the harassment and abuse of parents and children has only increased. A resort to federal court intervention in the widespread criminal collusion in state government was the next logical step.

It’s time to recognize Family Court for what it is—a corporate crime ring raiding parents and children of financial and psychological well-being, and devouring our children’s futures. And its not just divorce lawyers—its judges, “judicial administrators,” psychologists, cops and prosecutors—people we should be able to trust—in a modern day criminal cabal using county courtrooms and sheriff’s deputies as the machinery of organized crime.

Since state officials’ hands are too deep into the cookie jar to stop their own abuse, we’re seeking the assistance of federal oversight.

The present-day suffering of so many parents and children has and is being wrought within a larger system characterized by a widespread institutional failure of—indeed contempt for—the rule of law.

Family courts, the legal community, professional institutions such as the state bar, psychology boards, and criminal justice institutions have in the recent decade gradually combined to cultivate a joint enterprise forum in which widespread “family practice” exceptions to the rule of law are not only tolerated, but increasingly encouraged. Professional behavior that would only a few years ago be recognized as unethical, illegal, or otherwise intolerable by American legal, psychological, law enforcement, or social work professionals has increasingly achieved acceptance—indeed applause—from institutional interests which benefit from a joint enterprise enforcing the unwritten law of “who you know is more important than what you know.

In this lawless behavior’s most crass infestation, Family Court Judges are regularly heard to announce, in open court, “I am the law” and proceed to act accordingly with impunity, indifference, and without shame.

The effect on parents and children seeking social support within this coalescing “family law” forum has not been as advertised by courts and professionals—a new healing—but instead a new affliction: an ‘imposed disability’ of de rigueur deprivation of fundamental rights in the name of ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’ funded by converting college funds into a bloated ministry of the Bar Associations leaving families and their children with mere crumbs of their own success.

Many family court judges regularly administer such obnoxious ‘renegade’ justice every day, in open defiance of the rule of law. ‘Sober as a judge’ these days has a whole new meaning.

We need reform toward a more humane family dispute resolution solution

Many of our members are mothers, fathers, and children who have withstood abundant hardship resulting from the current practices of what is generally described as the “Family Law Community.”

These injuries and insults include fraudulent, inefficient, harmful, and even dangerous services; an institutionalized culture of indifference to “clearly-established” liberties; insults to the autonomy and dignity of parents and children; extortion, robbery, abuse, and more, delivered at the hands of eager operators within the divorce industry. ~~ CPRW Vid1 - 2016

World4Justice2016

It’s just not possible that intelligent lawyers like judges don’t understand exactly what goes on in their courtrooms, yet they allow it to continue.

This judicial collusion is far more serious crime than even the fraud of divorce attorneys themselves.

We need reform toward a more humane family dispute resolution solution. They’ve treated us as enemies of the state. When we thought we’d be welcomed, or at least heard, we’ve instead become targets of prosecution and terrorist threats. They've assaulted us, harassed our members including threatening “gun cock” and death threat late night phone calls, attacked our businesses, professional licenses, and threatened to jail and extort us with further crime.

It’s outrageous that our own government allows this to happen, and we’re asking the federal court to protect our members as we pursue the civil and criminal charges against the courts. A complete set of filings and exhibits is available from CCFC’s Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/ccfconline ~~ Grandparents and Grandkids World4Justice2016 ~ GR Vid2 -- www.facebook.com/Grandparents4Justice

Jury trials have been unlawfully eliminated as an option in family court by unelected adminstrators, leaving judges to do whatever they want and control the cases completely. The checks and balances of the judicial system have been removed and profit motives win by the gravity of money over decades.

Freedom of speech in the United States

“Will of the people the only legitimate foundation of any government, protect its free expression, our first object.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

"No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent."

“There are subtle ways and overt ways of alienating a child from a parent, but either way it’s evil”

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

Stand up for Zoraya

Stand Up For Zoraya

Internet Defense League

Collaborative Family Law

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Strengthening Father-Child Relationships

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